Road Trip hits 5,000 miles in the great wide open

It wasn't Craters of the Moon, or Glacier National Park, but reaching 5,000 miles in tiny Hiland, Wyo., presented the opportunity for this picture of the Audi I'm road-testing framed against a huge, gorgeous sky.
Daniel Terdiman/CNET

HILAND, Wyo.--I've been in a lot of small towns over the years, but in even the very smallest, I've never seen a city limits line like the one I saw here.

It happened that I hit exactly 5,000 miles of driving on Road Trip 2009 in this one-store-seems-to-be-it town in central Wyoming. As the odometer rolled over to 1000.0--which in the case of the Audi Q7 TDI I'm road-testing equates to 5,000 miles since the odometer resets to 0.0 when you hit 2,000 miles--I was able to pull into a parking lot in front of the town.

Hiland, Wyo., where I hit 5,000 miles even for Road Trip 2009, has a population of 10.
Daniel Terdiman/CNET

That is to say, Hiland has a population of...10. And just one or two buildings that I could see.

Which is to say, it was a perfect place for a Road Trip thousand-mile milestone. On this trip, that's happened in several different places, obviously, the two most interesting being at Craters of the Moon and Glacier National Park. Usually, based on my experiences over the last four years, the milestones come when I'm along some nondescript highway.

In this case, 1000.0 miles on the odometer means 5,000 miles total on Road Trip 2009.
Daniel Terdiman/CNET

Not to demean nondescript, of course. Those highways have featured things like attractive mountains, large meadows, huge forests and other natural wonders. And in Hiland, it was no different. Central Wyoming, which is Continental Divide country, is dominated by rolling hills and abrupt rock formations. It's fun. Plus on some of them, the speed limit is 75 miles an hour. I'm not sure I'd seen that before, or if I did, I wasn't paying attention.

In just a few days--and a few hours of driving--I'll be hanging up my Road Trip 2009 hat, so it's likely that this was my final thousand-mile mile achievement. Until next year, that is.